Alternative names | Gužvara[1] |
---|---|
Type | Pastry |
Place of origin | former Yugoslavia |
Serving temperature | Hot or cold |
Main ingredients | Phyllo dough, white cheese (feta, sirene), eggs |
Other information | Other ingredients include milk, kaymak and lard or sunflower oil and different types of fruit and nuts |
Gibanica (Serbian Cyrillic: гибаница, pronounced [ˈɡibanit͡sa]) is a traditional pastry dish popular all over the Balkans. It is usually made with cottage cheese and eggs. Recipes can range from sweet to savoury, and from simple to festive and elaborate multi-layered cakes.
A derivative of the Serbo-Croatian verb gibati/гибати meaning "to fold; sway, swing, rock", the pastry was mentioned in Vuk Stefanović Karadžić's Serbian Dictionary in 1818 and by a Slovenian priest Jožef Kosič in 1828, where it was described as a special Slovenian cake which is "a must at wedding festivities and is also served to workers after finishing a big project".[2] It is a type of layered strudel, a combination of Turkish and Austrian influences in different cuisines of the former Yugoslavia. Today the versions of this cake can be found in Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, North Macedonia and other regions of the former Yugoslavia. Variants of this rich layered strudel are found in Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, and Syria.[3]
Gibanica may sometimes also refer to a walnut roll, which is a sweet bread with a spiral of walnut paste rolled up inside.